Obama Nominates First Openly Gay Service Secretary To Lead Army

President Barack Obama has made history by nominating Eric Fanning, a civilian who has become the first openly gay man to ever be nominated to serve as Secretary of the Army.

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Fanning will oversee an army that is in the midsts of a massive change. At a peak of 570,000 soldiers, the army plans to shrink to the smallest size since WWII ended.

Before this, Fanning was with the navy, overseeing massive ship and aircraft programs. Before that he briefly served as acting Secretary of the Air Force and since June 2015 he has been Undersecretary of the Army.

He now has major influence on the selection of generals who will oversee this major transformation.

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From the Washington Post:

Battered by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has had to deal with a spike in suicides as the wars drew to an end and has struggled at times to provide the war wounded with the care they need to heal.

Recently, the Army’s outgoing top officer, Gen. Ray Odierno, said that tight budgets and the ongoing strain of 14 years of war had badly degraded the Army’s readiness to fight and that only one-third of its brigades were prepared to deploy to a war zone, the lowest readiness rate in decades.